The pressure is on Australian banks to keep up with customer's growing use of smartphone apps to pay for in-store and online purchases.
A Deloitte survey has found the use of mobile payment solutions has grown 14 per cent over the past year, with over a quarter of respondents now using them.
Mobile payment solutions include apps such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay, which allow users to process payments for online or in-store purchases using the app, without having to punch in their credit card details every time.
Most of these apps act as "mobile wallets", allowing users to store their card details and authorise payments using either a PIN or biosecurity measure like fingerprint recognition.
According to the The Media Consumer Survey 2017, the use of fingerprint authentication on smartphones has surged 35 per cent in the last year, with fingerprint recognition available on all leading smartphones on the market, including the iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy S6, and Google Pixel 2.
Despite the strong public uptake, ANZ remains the only of Australia's "big four" banks to partner with all three major mobile payment apps, allowing customers with these apps to process payments using its card online or by tapping their phone to an eftpos machine in the same way they would use PayPass.
Westpac cards can be used with Samsung Pay and Android Pay only. Android Pay also recently became available to Commonwealth Bank customers, while NAB has yet to partner with any third party apps.
But both NAB and CommBank are responding to Australians' changing spending habits by providing their customers access to a mobile wallet through their company's mobile banking app: customers with Android phones can tap and pay at any terminal where contact-less payments are accepted, whereas iPhone holders have to attach a PayTag sticker to the back of their device first.
While digital wallets may be good for business, customers could find themselves at increasing risk of identity theft.
"Fingerprints in general are stronger than your typical PIN ... people pick very simple PINs because they are easier to remember," Ty Miller, Managing Director of Threat Intelligence, told Fairfax Media.
"The downside of fingerprints, though, is that you use your fingerprint everywhere, so you are essentially scattering your password everywhere, including all over your phone. After phone manufacturers releases a new phone with a new fingerprint scanner - whether that's Apple or Samsung or Google - it's basically a race for hackers to see how quickly they can bypass it. It has previously taken around three days. People have claimed to bypass the phone's fingerprint recognition just by breathing on the scanner.
"These devices are mass-manufactured... they are designed to be cheap and to work while being affordable to consumers, and that tends to result in their ability to be bypassed."
Apple's recently released iPhone X with Face ID, which allows users to unlock their phone using facial recognition technology, could be a game-changer for the future of financial security when making payments.
CommBank has become the first Australian bank to allow customers to simply look at their phone screen to access their banking app.
"While we strive towards convenience an ease of use, we don't implement new technology without being able to guarantee security for customers," Pete Steele, Commonwealth Bank Executive General Manager of Digital, said.
Though Mr Miller warns the technology isn't perfect: "quite basic attacks have been used where people have held a pair of binoculars over the iPhone's camera and been able to point it across the room at the rightful person's face to bypass the phone's security".
